Tiny Mummy’s ‘Alien’ Appearance Finally Explained

Researchers hope their new research will settle debate over the origins of Ata, a naturally mummified infant found in the Chilean desert.

By Erika Check Hayden

Ata, the six-inch mummy found in Chile's Atacama desert

Photograph by Emery Smith

Ata is just six inches tall, with a conical-shaped head and unusually
hard bones for her size. Some have claimed that she’s an alien. But a new
study published today in the journal Genome Research not
only continues to disprove the alien theory, but also reveals a scientific
explanation for her allegedly extraterrestrial appearance.

The debate started in 2003 when the naturally mummified remains of Ata
were discovered near a ghost town in Chile’s Atacama Desert. A Spanish
businessman, Ramón Navia-Osorio, purchased her mummy and in 2012 allowed
a doctor named Steven Greer to use x-ray and computed tomography (CT) imaging
to analyze her skeleton.

Greer is the founder of The Disclosure Project,
which is “working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial
intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems,” according
to its Web site.

Ata is only as long as a human fetus. But a radiologist who analyzed the
images said that Ata’s bones were about as mature as those of a human six-year-old.

At the time, Greer also provided samples of Ata’s bone marrow to immunologist
Garry Nolanat Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Nolan’s team
sequenced Ata’s DNA and concluded that her genetic material was from a human being,
not an alien. But he couldn’t explain how such a small person could exhibit
her unusual physical appearance.

Ata is only as long as a human fetus, but her bones are about as mature as those of a six-year-old.

Photograph by Emery Smith

“Once we understood that it was human, the next step was to understand
how something could come to look like this,” Nolan says.

So Nolan worked with genetic researchers at Stanford and with computational
biologist Atul Butte’s
team at the University of California, San Francisco to analyze Ata’s genome.
According to their new study, mutations are present in seven of Ata’s genes
that are all involved in human growth. Nolan now thinks that this combination
of mutations caused Ata’s severe skeletal abnormalities, including her
unusually rapid bone growth. He says that Ata is most likely a human fetus
who was either stillborn or died soon after birth.

But those who believe that Ata is extraterrestrial aren’t changing their
minds, regardless of the new scientific revelations.

Doctors who treat children with rare genetic bone disorders also think
the debate highlights how archaeologists and other scientists can be misled
by genetic disorders that cause unusual physical features. For instance,
geneticist Fowzan Alkuraya points
to the controversy surrounding the “hobbits,”
small creatures that were discovered 15 years ago in Indonesia. Scientists
are still embroiled in debate over whether the diminutive beings are relatives
of modern humans, or are simply humans with unusually small size.

“This paper serves as a reminder about the exotic nature of many genetic
disorders,” says Alkuraya, who is a geneticist at the King Faisal Specialist
Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

All humans—Ata included—can have many different genetic mutations. But
usually only one of these mutations actually causes a child’s disease.
It’s “virtually unheard of” for seven mutations to be involved, Alkuraya
says; he thinks that one or at most two of the mutations probably caused
Ata’s growth problems.

But it would be difficult, if not impossible, to decide which of Ata’s
genetic defects caused her symptoms. That’s because scientists don’t have
any information about Ata’s relatives. If they had DNA from Ata’s parents,
for instance, they could check which of Ata’s mutations were also present
in her mother and father. Any of Ata’s mutations that were also present
in her parents’ DNA might be harmless, because unlike Ata, her parents
lived long enough to conceive a baby.

Even though no one knows anything about her parents, Nolan thinks that
someone cared for Ata when she died about 40 years ago. He points to the
way she was carefully laid flat on the ground, wrapped in a leather pouch.

“They didn’t just throw it away; somebody thought it was important. It
was their child,” Nolan says.

Like Jungers, Nolan now wants to see Ata returned to Chile and laid to
rest once again.

“I don’t think that people should be trafficking in human bodies and claiming
they’re aliens for the sake of monetary advantage,” Nolan says.